CAPSULE:
For once we have a serious adult science
fiction story, part of a new face for SyFy Channel.
A contemporary man dying of cancer is carefully
terminated, cryogenically frozen, and revived in
2084 to discover a very new world. A new device
will allow him to take photographs of the mental
images of his memories. The film looks at his
relationship to the girl he left behind and a woman
who is his new caretaker. Mateo Gil directs his
own screenplay. It is all done humorlessly, though
the viewer may be reminded of the premise of Woody
Allen's SLEEPER. The film is in English, but is a
Belgian, French, Spanish co-production. Rating:
high +1 (-4 to +4) or 6/10

I was under the impression that when the SyFy channel released a
film it was usually on the level of SHARKNADO. This film has
higher aspirations. Here SyFy is releasing an adult piece of
science fiction with characters at its center. The plot of having
a contemporary person waking up in the future goes at least back to
the book LOOKING BACKWARD and would have to include Woody Allen's
SLEEPER. So the plot is familiar but now it has more of a feel of
technical realism.

Tom Hughes plays Marc Jarvis, who died about 2015 but had his body
cryonically frozen in liquid nitrogen to be revived when the
science of medicine was up to the technical challenge of curing and
reviving him. That day comes in 2084 and a high-bio-tech company
is ready to regenerate and bring back the dead. In a high-tech
medical facility, Marc recovers after many years of being
effectively dead, now alive but being nursed by Elizabeth (played
by Charlotte le Bon). His future life is one with a lot of
familiar touches predicted also by The Twilight Zone, JUST IMAGINE,
and other science fiction sources. People choose their bodies;
lifespan is much longer; sex is no longer stigmatized.

Marc's mind goes over his restored memories that were surprisingly
not destroyed by the freezing process. He remembers his first life
as being very organic. His best memories involve nature. The film
shows his first life as a bond with nature, starting with the first
scenes of his being born into a world of flesh and blood. He says
his second life started in much the same way, but as we later see
the two worlds diverge. The year 2084 is cold to the touch. While
his first life was painted in earth tones, his new life is mostly
in cold colors of whites, blue, and gray. Even the people have
faces flushed with white. Marc can hold onto a visual record of
his mental images with a new (future) invention called a Mind
Writer that allows him to show his memories to his doctors. But
Marc's situation deeply depresses him and he finds himself
identifying with the Frankenstein monster.

Much of the film, narrated by Marc, are his philosophical
reflections on life gathered from the rebirth experience. REALIVE
is finally a cold, bloodless, look into a possible future and at
human relationships in the present. Still, this look at the future
is hard to become engaged with because the world is so cold and
lifeless. As Marc says, "before I died I thought there was nothing
after death; now I'm sure." I rate REALIVE a high +1 on the -4 to
+4 scale or 6/10. I am not sure if the title means "Real Alive,"
"Re-alive," or perhaps "Real Live."